A Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

This seems to be the seminal question of our time. That conspiracies exist is self-evident. In the immortal words of Col. Gathers, “By the time God crapped out the third caveman a conspiracy was launched against one of them!” It is part of man’s nature to form groups, to create exclusive collectives, and to organize plans for mutual benefit. While it might be comforting to believe otherwise, there is no fine line demarking this quotidian form of socializing from more ominous confederacies. Criminals and businesses alike require oaths of loyalty and non-disclosure, and both are capable of unethical acts. For the victim of said acts, it matters little whether they were performed within or without of the aegis of the law; no more than it matters to the soldier whether he dies during a police action or a declared war.

The term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is nothing but a comforting bulwark designed to avoid important questions. Widely believed to have been seeded into the public consciousness by the CIA following the Warren Commission as part of Operation Mockingbird, the term implies that there are limits to the conspiring which powerful organizations will engage in, and that to suppose otherwise is madness. Intelligence agents may lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their ends – but these ends are ultimately for good. Police might go undercover, traffic drugs, and lie during the interrogation – but only to bring the guilty to justice. Businesses might cut corners, exaggerate the benefits, and use psychologically manipulative tactics to sell their products – but at the end of the day their products will still offer the benefit they claim.

To assert that conspiracy theories are a priori false is tantamount to asserting that there is honour amongst thieves. That there are certain lines which nobody but a lone maniac would cross. That large organizations filter out the psychopaths, and prevent them from rising to the top. That somehow – even though all and sundry are demanding that nobody be held to an objective moral standard, while late-stage capitalism focuses with perfect myopia upon the bottom line – that somehow, in spite of all of this, we can trust our institutions to hold themselves in check.

Diogenes’s Search for an Honest Man

Diogenes the Cynic was a Greek philosopher from the 4^th century B.C. A contemporary of Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great, he was a man of uncompromising morals who became legendary for the antagonistic stunts he would perform in the name of philosophy. In art he is often depicted carrying a lantern, because of one of these stunts involved him walking through the market during the day with said lantern held aloft. When finally asked what he was doing, he answered that he was simply looking for an honest man.

If we are to examine the nature of conspiracy, we will have to go a step further than Diogenes. Our search requires that we find an honest thief.

A popular character in fiction is the criminal with a moral code. The assassin who draws the line at women and children. The pimp who takes care of his girls. The Mafioso who’s still a patriot when the chips are down. These characters break the rules without becoming outright villains, never crossing the moral event horizon described in the Steppenwolf song “The Pusher”:

You know I smoked a lot of grass.
Oh Lord! I popped a lot of pills.
But I’ve never touched nothin’
That my spirit couldn’t kill.
You know I’ve seen a lot of people walking ’round
With tombstones in their eyes.
But the pusher don’t care If you live — or if you die.
God Damn! The pusher.
God Damn! The pusher.

This is the distinction which defines the antihero.

Critics of the antihero accuse him of glamourizing vice. While this is part of the attraction – to freely indulge in violence and hedonism, in flagrant disregard of propriety – if this was all they were, they’d simply be a villain. What attracts audiences to these characters is that, despite shrugging off the moral expectations of society, they haven’t lost touch with morality itself. In abandoning the moral safety net of social expectations, they set themselves on a path which demands that they discover morality itself. If they fail they damn their souls, but if they succeed they discover the spirit which underlies the letter of the law.

The criminal with a moral code resonates with us because he is a dramatic representation of adolescence, the time in our lives when we’re expected to grow beyond simple obedience, and develop into adults with an internalized sense of right and wrong. It is a character which compels audiences; but does he exist outside of our dreams? Can such a figure rise through the ranks in a world such as ours?

There are many who believe that Al Capone was such a character. Like any gangster, he was a man who lived by violence, but who also embraced a sense of class and honour, making him a prominent figure during his day. His status as head of the Chicago outfit was no secret, but he was also a major public benefactor, frequently posing for the cameras, a notorious darling of the media. The legal establishment seethed at his existence, but they repeatedly failed at building a criminal case against him, despite his many speakeasies, brothels, and gambling houses. It wasn’t until after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929 that public opinion began to turn against him, and prosecutors finally devised an angle of attack: but their angle had nothing to do with any of his violent crimes. The charge which eventually saw him jailed was tax evasion, for failing to give the government their cut of the profits off of his illegal activities. He was sentenced to 11 years, but was released after 7 due to a rapid decline in health. In 1947 Al Capone would pass away at the age of 48.

Move forward forty years and consider his 1983 cinematic depiction, Tony Montana in Scarface. A man with no limits to his ambition. A hell-bound soul who betrayed everybody close to him – his boss, his family, his friends, his subordinates – in his quest for worldly power. When asked how much would finally be enough, he replied “The world, Chico, and everything in it.” By the end of the movie he achieves his goal… he lies dead in a pool of his own blood, underneath a sign which reads “The World is Yours.”

If we contrast the 1983 film with the original Scarface, released in 1932 during the height of Al Capone’s infamy, we’ll see more similarities than differences. The remake didn’t invent the theme of hubris bringing on nemesis; but it did give it a far darker in tone. The original portrayed its protagonist as a tragic figure, who rose to power by defying unpopular laws during the age of prohibition, only to fall to his death alongside the market crash of 1929. In contrast, De Palma’s remake was a character portrait of a vulgar psychopath, who rode the fast times and easy money of the 80s into superficial class, but whose soul never left the gutter in which it was born.

Which of these cinematic depictions was closest to the historical Al Capone? Or, to put it another way, was there ever a historical Robin Hood? Or is he just a figment of our fictional landscape? A delusion we place overtop the faces of a low-born thugs during periods of history where romance gets the better of us?

For such a character to exist at the top of an extra-legal institution there are two basic prerequisites. First, there must be a significant flaw with the explicit moral order. Generally this manifests as either an overreach by the government, such as with prohibition, or a failure to provide basic services, such as in the case of a failed or puppetted state. The second prerequisite is a widespread consensus on morality. The first is necessary because if the police force is both effective and restrained, then there’s no need for professional assassins, moral or otherwise, and there’s no widespread market for bootleg liquor. In such a milieu there isn’t enough money to support a criminal empire without resorting to evil methods. The second is necessary because without shared scruples, there’s nothing preventing the unscrupulous from rising to the top. When the majority of the population embrace a specific moral standard, both the customers and the henchmen will demand moral leadership from the bosses; even if he’s completely amoral, it’s in his best interests to not get involved in anything too dirty.

But we stopped living in such a world when those in power decided to exceed their mandate.

By deciding that the ends would justify the means – by weaponising the IRS to condemn a law breaker, not for the laws he broke, but for failing to share his ill-gotten gains with the government – they didn’t just destroy the man, they destroyed the very possibility of the man. In embracing cynicism they did what the Sheriff of Nottingham never could: they killed Robin Hood.

It is this corrupting nature of choosing ends over means led inexorably to a world of Tony Montanas, a world where audiences know that a Mafioso can’t be good, because they see the corruption that’s present in their daily lives. In a world where men have no limits – where power is taken by those who are willing to go one layer deeper – there is no room for tragic heroes, only for villains who are freed from all restraint.

By all indicators this is the world in which we find ourselves. With each passing year the corruption and scandals surpass the enormities which used to make headlines. From Watergate to online silencing, from public officials taking graft to the Chinese holding the President’s son’s laptop hostage, from Iran-Contra to Operation Fast and Furious, from honeypots involving adult prostitutes to Epstein Island.

When every lie needs a bigger lie to cover it up, the greatest liar will be king.

A Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power

Thus, the question of conspiracy becomes a question of moral cognition, not of legal practicality. The challenge to understanding conspiracy isn’t in figuring out who knows what, and how they ultimately profit from it, but in realizing how far some men are willing to go when they abandon personal integrity. If we are to understand what sort of conspiracies are possible in today’s world – to what depths the conspirators are willing to plunge – we must understand the morality of power; the morality of the abyss.

So let us structure our analysis of conspiracy as a study of morality; cognitive morality specifically, to understand how they think. For this, Lawrence Kholber Theory of Moral Development will serve as our basic framework.

Kholberg’s work served as a follow-up to Piaget’s model of childhood development. Piaget had been asking the question “What is the essential firmware with which humans are born? What are the inherent archetypes which populate the human mind?” Kholberg sought to build on this, creating a model which explained the advancement of moral understanding which develops from childhood to adulthood. He wasn’t asking what people thought was right or wrong, he was asking how they came to their conclusions on morality. His theory broke down moral understanding into three levels, each of which is split into two stages. In brief:

Level 1 – Preconventional Morality

The level of children and animals, where morality is defined by the consequences imposed by external authority. Morality’s locus is entirely outside the self, understood only as a force of nature.

Stage 1 – Obedience and Punishment Orientation: follow the rules, or else face punishment; it isn’t illegal if you don’t get caught.

Stage 2 – Individualism and Self-Interest: the rules aren’t absolute, but particular to each enforcer. Ergo, what’s in it for me? If it feels good, do it.

Level 2 – Conventional Morality

The second level is that followed by most adolescents and adults. Moral authority is internalized but never questioned.

Stage 3 –Interpersonal Conformity: performing good actions can lead to beneficial treatment; be a good boy or good girl to earn privileges in society. People who do that thing are bad people, so don’t do that thing. Or – people who say that thing are bad are actually the ones who are bad, so do that thing.

Stage 4 – Authority and Social Order: we must have an organized system of rules so that society can coordinate moral behaviour; we must have law and order. “A human life is more important than property,” or “Do the crime, do the time.”

Level 3 – Postconventional Morality

Only a minority of people take on this level of moral reasoning, 10-15% of adults according to studies. Morality is but an applied form of the universal ethical principles, requiring introspection and particularized consideration.

Stage 5 – Social Contract and Individual Rights: the purpose of moral law is to serve the good of the group, but also the good of the individuals. The inevitable conflict between these two principles requires careful consideration. Is the action itself good? Are the effects of this action good?

Stage 6 – Universal Principles: this final stage sees the individual embracing ultimate ideals for themselves and for others. Morality is understood as the application of both principles and purpose; it is a collection of best practices whose ultimate end is the Good itself. Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is an example of this; He is fulfilling the law by transcending the law.

By inverting Kholberg’s theory we can develop a Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power, which descends through the layers of how agency might be exerted in a purely amoral or evolutionary environment. As with Kholberg’s moral theory, it serves to examine the cognitive understanding of how conspiracies manifest, how they might be manifest, as opposed to making conclusions as to which specific conspiracies are presently extant. They will also be categorized by three overlying Schemas, that of the Practical Hustle, Realpolitik, and finally the Moral Abyss.

Schema 1 – the Liar

This is the Schema of those who approach things with a Manichean understanding of humanity. It is a world populated by heroes and villains: good guys who fight for the truth, and bad guys who seek to conceal it. It approaches society with a naïve understanding of how humanity operates. It is also the layer of cognitive error which the pejorative term “Conspiracy Theorist” describes, and which most ‘Fact Checkers’ and debunkers operate on. The former are frustrating because their black-and-white approach makes them prone to seeing nothing beyond the surface level. The latter are annoying because their work helps cover up real conspiracies which don’t fit a childish narrative. The former believe anything, while the latter ridicule everything, both wind up creating a social situation that makes deeper investigations taboo.

Layer 1 – Truth and Villainy: the most basic conception of conspiracy is deception to achieve a material benefit. Motives are childishly evil. Greed is the usual reason, the bad guys want to steal our stuff. Even when the motives are more abstract, they’re still simplistic: a Captain Planet villain who wishes to pollute the Earth for the sake of pollution itself. The truth is held up as a panacea: expose the conspiracy and the good guys will win. There is never any consideration of what the consequences of this will be; whether there was a good reason for the cover up, or how the system itself made the cover up inevitable. Frequently they’ll fall into the error of mistaking coincidence for conspiracy, because they prioritize a human-centric narrative over the random absurdities of nature. Most Mandela Effect observations are a result of this, failing to understand that our memory works by recreating the events of our past, not by referencing a data recording.

The skeptics who work on this layer dismiss all conspiracy theories as moral confusion, no different than saying “Big Brother is Ungood!” In their view, a grammatical error. “Silly prole, only Emmanuel Goldstein can be Ungood!” All cops are heroes or All cops are bastards, but it’s one or the other. In the first layer, policing won’t be understood as a recent historical novelty, nor as a necessary evil, nor as an organization primarily focussed on protecting the banks insurance companies: they’re viewed as a sort of permanent aspect of the moral landscape, to be loved or hated, but never questioned.

Whether skeptic or believer, the people operating at this layer are primarily motivated by egotistic emotions. Believers get together to drink beer, sitting on milk crates in their garage, muttering to themselves in hushed voices that they haven’t fallen for the lies and tricks. The skeptics will congregate on forums, guffawing at the fools who don’t understand Science! And patting themselves on the back for being clever. Those who actively conspire on this layer will usually stick to petty criminal operations. Layer 1 can largely be described as ‘mostly harmless’.

Layer 2 – Professional Ethics: just as Stage 2 of Kholberg’s Moral Development recognizes that moral rules vary from authority to authority, layer 2 of our conspiratorial taxonomy recognizes that different organizations have different ethical systems which drive their behaviour. Lawyers, for instance, follow the ethics of a professional, adversarial system: they have a duty to the bar first, the client second, and the court third. This can manifest in strange ways, such as in the rules of discovery. At first blush it might seem that the morally correct thing to do would be for both legal counsels to provide full and accurate discovery, in the same manner that witnesses are called upon to speak the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” To withhold unasked for discovery – or to overwhelm with extraneous files – seems to undermine the cause of Justice, as if the lawyers were conspiring to subvert her. However, demanding such an affable standard would place an impossible burden on lawyers; how could they know everything that would become relevant prior to the adversarial process beginning? Or, alternatively, how could you prove they withheld relevant evidence by intent rather than by mistake? Thus, we only expect lawyers to provide that which is asked for.

All professions manifest group behaviour of one sort or another, and this might appear conspiratorial at first, but ultimately it is just emergent phenomenon of practical professional ethics. A ‘conspiracy’ to a Layer 2 thinker is either a misapprehension of this inevitability, or it involves a group of said professionals explicitly performing ethical violations for the sake of some other end.

Layer 2s believe that we can take refuge in the law, in established protocols, to save us from moral considerations. That if something wildly immoral is happening in society, then there must be some ethical rule which is being violated – if only we enforced the guarantee to a speedy trial, if only we forced politicians to stop lying under oath, if only we used peer review correctly, if only, if only…

Layer 2 thinkers ignore how ethical systems can manifest into systemic atrocities, or how powerful individuals or ideologies can easily overwhelm simple order. They’re liable to justify their own actions by these criteria as well; for instance, there is a propensity amongst radical leftists to justify their own moral crimes by pointing out how Capitalism is inherently exploitative. “What is the point of me limiting myself to just actions, when I live in an inherently unjust system?” Conservatives, meanwhile, seek to add corrective patches, without ever questioning why the system repeatedly fails. Layer 2 sees the system, and corruptions of the system, but not the ghost within and below the system itself.

Schema 2 – the Realist

It would seem that most people – two thirds of the population, perhaps – falls into Schema 1, viewing conspiracy as something explicit and prosaic. A villainous Ponzi Scheme at Layer 1, or a legal Pyramid Scheme at Layer 2. They view the matter as something straight-forward with clear distinctions, and precise, almost mathematical definitions, where all the variables can be known and defined. Those who operate at Schema 2 understand what Donald Rumsfeld meant when he said “There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns…” This statement received extensive ridicule in the media because what he was describing was a level where few men operate. It is the realm of the gambler, the soldier, the entrepreneur, and the spy. We live in a world which is scrutable, but we can only scrutinize so much of it before we must act. The future is uncertain, so place your bets.

The only thing we can be certain of is that all are subject to the laws of Darwinian Realpolitik. It’s a dog eat dog world when you go off the reservation, and only those with well-honed instincts and the favour of Lady Luck will survive. But at least we all know what we’re competing for: the finite resources we need to survive.

Layer 3 – the State of Nature: Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War is the most extensive analysis of warfare ever written, considering not only the direct application of war itself (technology, supplies, offensive/defensive operations, and terrain), the but also the roles played by morality, psychology, and momentum in achieving victory. He is mostly remembered for the observation which culminates from all of this, that “War is merely the continuation of policy with other means.”

Our cognitive models of the world involves concentric layers of complexity, one atop the other. The atom, the molecule, the amino acid, the protein, the cell, the organ, the human, the family, the community, the country, the policy, and the war. Each layer integrates upward and downwards into the next. The harvest feeds the soldier so that the soldier can protect the harvest. Everything at every level is a conspiracy to out-compete the others. The difference between a good General and a great General is that a good General understands not only his conspiracy against the enemy, but also that the enemy General is conspiring against him. A great General understands not only this, but also the conspiracies of supply chain disruptions, of demoralized subordinates, of microorganisms which seek to infect his troops and render them ineffective, as well as the upper conspiracies of the politicians who will limit his actions for the sake of public acceptance.

There is no difference between a corporation donating to charity or hiring a lobbyist; both actions are initiated with the goal of increasing shareholder value.

The man who reasons at Layer 3 understands that there is no fundamental distinction between ‘conspiracy’ and ‘normality’, because conspiracy and competition are inherent at the basic level of reality. The only places free of conspiracy is the walled garden of society, which great men conspire to create so that their citizens can be better organized against those on the outside. In other words, the absent of conspiracy can only be achieved by conspiracy itself.

Layer 4 – Applied Corruption: where Layer 3 embodies the mentality of the soldier, the gambler, or the strategist, Layer 4 embodies that of the spy, the hacker, or the agent provacateur. The General will use advance scouts to detect and interpret the enemy’s movements. The purpose of the spy is to know the enemy better than he knows himself, and to compel him down certain paths without him ever realizing that his will had been subverted.

The essence of spycraft is to realize that man is a hackable animal (the recent statements from AI researchers and technocrats regarding this are nothing new; it’s an old observation of salesmen and spies alike, the only part that’s ‘new’ is the application of Big Data, as well as the autism which leads them to state such an ugly truth so bluntly). In the Dune novels, Frank Herbert described an order known as the Bene Gesserit, who so disciplined their minds and bodies that they’d acquired the ability to command others through The Voice, a combination of tonalities and inflections which would force the recipient to obey. Herbert explained his inspiration for this power thusly: most of us have the ability to drive loved ones into fits of rage by careful use of the expressions and turns of phrase which deep familiarity has taught us will drive them mad. Ergo, we already know how to command the emotions of another. What if there were a way to develop such mental discipline that one might be able to perform this feat on perfect strangers?

Outside of fantasy, it’s highly unlikely that something as exaggerated as The Voice can actually exist; not as depicted in Herbert’s novels, but lesser forms of it are available to anybody who pays attention to human nature, and close approximations can be achieved through media distribution on a wider scale. A man dressed in work boots, a reflective orange vest, and a hard hat will find himself invisible to a crowd of people wearing suits; the well-dressed workers will refuse to acknowledge his existence. And nobody expects a man in a homeless camp to be an overwatch for a human trafficking network.

By something as simple as changing your outfit, you control how others perceive you. You might not be able to force them to obey the literal words coming out of your mouth, but you can force them to underestimate you, and control their emotional states through indirect means. State something true while dressed like a fool, and you will convince most people to believe a fiction.

It’s one thing to negotiate a peace treaty with your enemy; it’s something else entirely to convince them that abiding by it would spite you. It’s one thing to know that your enemy isn’t using their steel industry to build tanks; it’s something else entirely to provoke a labour union strike at their primary steel mill.

Layers 3 and 4 recognize the Machiavellian nature of the world. The altruists conspire to instantiate international standards of Just War, and individual moral principles which create populations which are resistant to manipulation. The cynics exploit the loopholes, and expect their enemies to do the same. The difference between 3 and 4 is recognizing the extent to which individual social engineering can be applied.

Schema 3 – The Demoniac

The essence of Schema 3 is that either morality is as much an inherent part of reality as Darwinian competition – or else, it doesn’t exist at all. Either the a rotten tree cannot bear good fruit, and that the tool shapes the hand of the master – or, all paths are available, and Good is no excuse for failure. The inevitable result of all of the previous layers’ subversion, misdirection, and conflict is that either humanity must find a way to traverse the moral abyss, or else we will plunge into our eternal demise.

Layer 5 – the Mastermind: often depicted in fiction, but seldom depicted well, is the man who’s embraced the art of hacking the soul as a principle in and of itself. He is the dark wizard who seeks infernal power to rewrite reality, or the technocrat who seeks the singularity to rewrite humanity.

They mimic the God Kings of the Bronze Age; a period during which great men instantiated a new codification of morality. It was no longer sufficient for men to be judged merely on their personal virtues; those of fairness, bravery, caution, and restraint which are crucial to behaviour within the tribe. Now it was required that they subordinate themselves to the needs of civilization, to obeying the dictates of the crop cycle, to the delayed and sober adjudication of justice, and to obeying commands and maintaining rank and order during the terror of organized warfare. The God Kings of that era became embodiments of the gods themselves, and drove mankind into the next stage of our development.

The Amoral Mastermind is similar in that he seeks the same degree of tyrannical power, but unlike the kings of old he doesn’t achieve this feat through manifesting the divine; instead he seeks to command through apodaimos, by employing all the tools of deceit and manipulation to their fullest extent. He is the technologist warned about by CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man, who would seek to devise a permanent, inescapable tyranny for all of mankind through the tools of psychology and genetic manipulation. Where the God Kings had to achieve personal moral virtue to drive humanity forward, the Amoral Mastermind – though he has the capacity for moral greatness – indulges in the worst forms of moral callowness. He is driven by fear, hard-heartedness, gluttony, pride, and an infernal vision for perfect order through technological manipulation.

We are living through a transitional era. For most of human history unquestioning obedience was a virtue; information was sparse, and literacy rare. Faith and loyalty up and down the social ladder was the necessary norm. But at the advent of the new millennium we are suddenly provided with a wealth of information, enabling and demanding that we each take individual responsibility for our actions. The Amoral Mastermind seeks to release us from that bracing moral wind, and return us back to the Bronze Age, when men sacrificed men to the burning hands of the bull. He embraces the Abyss, to save humanity from seeing what lies within it.

Layer 6 – Keyser Söze: The greatest weakness of any conspiracy is the end which it pursues. It is that objective purpose which constrains it, which reveals it, which forces it to confront the light of objective truth.

What if we could form of conspiracy which had no such purpose? Which could forever exist in the dark?

Keyser Söze was such a character. The elusive and illusive criminal in the film The Usual Suspects who many thought was nothing but a myth. Originally a low-level drug dealer, whom the Hungarian mob tried to intimidate and control by threatening his wife and children at knife point, he responded by out-brutalizing his opponents. He killed his wife and children himself, in front of the enforcers, before turning on all of them, leaving only one to tell the story of what had happened. He is a man who fell into the abyss, who then became the abyss, turning himself into something so inscrutable that he might as well have become a ghost.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

The Mastermind has a goal, a purpose, an agenda. Keyser Söze has none of these things – just an unbridled will to power. How could such a man be beaten? How could he even be proven to exist?

And how might a conspiracy which existed only to conspire behave?

The nature of such a conspiracy would inevitably involve deception, plans within plans, manipulation, and far-reaching but vaguely defined implications. The Usual Suspects depicts how the character at the center of such a conspiracy might behave, but as a film it lacks the running time and depth of lore to fully flesh out all the moving parts. For a deeper examination we’ll have to turn to television, whose longer running time over multiple episodes allows the full extent of things to be hinted at. We’ll be considering the case of Star Trek’s insidious and possibly non-existent Section 31.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was famous for challenging Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful vision of the future. It put the Federation into a war with the Dominion, an enemy race of shapeshifters, who sought nothing less than perfect totalitarian control over all other sentient life in the galaxy. It asked whether Starfleet idealism could hold firm against such a paranoia-inducing foe.

This was the series which introduced Section 31, an intelligence service which claimed to have existed since the Federation Charter was ratified, but was outside of the chain of command, and willing to employ any and all tactics to achieve their ends. They sought to preserve Federation morality through methods which undermined that morality, using any and all means while hiding from those who would hold them to account. Whether or not it actually existed was left as an open question; all we see of it during the series is Luther Sloan, a man with access to technologies more advanced than anybody else in the Federation, who arrives one day under the story that he wishes to recruit one of the main characters, Dr. Julian Bashir.

By the end of the arc Sloan is dead, and there are no remaining leads. His abilities and influence were palpable; but whether Section 31 was a real organization, or if Sloan was a loan operator, is never decisively established.

Their main involvement occurs in the episode Inter Arma Enmi Silent Leges, titled after a quote from Cicero, “During times of war the law falls silent,” in which Sloan manages to turn the good doctor into his patsy, subvert the government of a Federation ally, and escape without a trace.

The episode begins with Bashir scheduled to attend a conference, hosted by the Federation’s current ally, but former enemy, the Romulans. Before he leaves, Sloan reappears – he’d last been seen over a year previously when he put Bashir through several trials to test him for candidacy in Section 31. Sloan makes a simple request: that Bashir use his medical expertise to assess Chairman Koval, head of Romulan Intelligence, when he sees him at the conference. There is a rumour that he is in the early stages of a fatal disease, and Sloan hopes that the doctor can confirm this.

Bashir sees this as an opportunity to expose Section 31 and bring them to justice, so he agrees to help Sloan. However, shortly after reporting that, yes, Koval does show the signs of degenerative illness, Admiral Ross – Bashir’s only point of contact with the Federation, who was working to help him expose Section 31’s activities – is hospitalized due to a stroke.

Bashir immediately suspects Sloan of poisoning the Admiral. Furthermore, Sloan could use the medical knowledge he provided to assassinate the militaristic Koval, replacing him with somebody under Section 31 control, thus preventing a Cold War from developing between the Federation and Romulans after the Dominion’s defeat. Koval’s disease could easily be pushed into the terminal stages without causing any suspicion. All Sloan would need was a Romulan double-agent to arrange an untraceable accident. Desperate to prevent a murder he confides in Senator Cretak, a Romulan he’d come to know during the course of the current conflict. She agrees to help him, and they hack into his Koval’s database to try and identify who the potential assassin might be.

It is at this point that Koval’s men arrive to arrest both of them, Bashir and Senator Cretak.

They’re dragged before a Romulan court, along with Sloan; who is revealed to be nothing more than a rogue Starfleet Intelligence agent. Bashir, for seeking to expose the assassination plot, is forgiven. Cretak is found guilty of treason for helping him instead of staying within her chain of command. Sloan is slated for further interrogation, but is shot and apparently killed when he attempts to escape.

It is only later that Bashir manages to put all the pieces together.

Sloan hadn’t actually been killed, and the story about him being a Starfleet Intelligence agent was all a cover. Sloan, Koval, and Ross had all been working together to undermine Cretak, using Bashir as an unwitting catspaw. In Bashir’s eyes she was a woman of integrity and honour, who was capable of reaching across the aisle to trust a former enemy. In theirs she was a dangerous and uncontrollable agent, a direct threat to Koval’s position as head of Intelligence, which he was using to guarantee a future of peace between the two governments. Ross had faked his illness to push Bashir and Cretak into collaboration, so that she might be deposed.

Upon confronting Ross with his conclusions, the Admiral confirms them all, and justifies it as being a temporary alliance of necessity, after having seen too many young men to their deaths. Bashir retorts that this isn’t what they’re dying for.

Admiral Ross: Inter arma enim silent leges.

Dr. Julian Bashir: “In time of war, the law falls silent.” Cicero. So, is that what we have become – a 24th century Rome, driven by nothing other than the certainty that Caesar can do no wrong?

But even this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Section 31, there are far deeper implications than what is explicitly discussed by the characters. Three points stand out.

First, one must conclude that Bashir’s ‘recruitment trials’ of the year before had been nothing of the sort; they’d been manipulative and abusive, and even at the time it had been a thin veneer of justification for what Sloan put him through. After the events of this episode, it’s clear that Sloan did all of this to goad Bashir into trying to expose Section 31 by working as a double agent.

Second, that for all of this to work Sloan must have had accurate models of both Bashir and Cretak’s personalities. He knew that Bashir had the charisma and curiosity to make a good intelligence agent, but that he was too morally stubborn to ever properly fit the role; and that Cretak had the insight and flexibility which would allow her to trust a man like Bashir, as well as possessing the sort of daring convictions which would drive her to take a chance for this cause. Unlike many movie plots which involve spy work, this one wasn’t premised upon impossible coincidences; an in-depth personnel file and personality exam would have been all that was required.

Finally there’s the question of Koval and who he works for. The simple answer is that he’s a double agent working for Seciton 31. But deeper consideration suggests something far more insidious. There’s no reason given for Koval to be a Romulan traitor; nor does it seem likely that an Intelligence agency as experienced as that of the Romulans could be easily coopted, and certainly not at the highest levels. It instead suggests something more akin to an alliance between Sloan and Koval. A conspiracy of interstellar proportions, involving rogue intelligence agents in all of the major powers, all of whom are conspiring together against their own governments for the sake of maintaining the conspiracy.

The episode ends with Bashir being woken for one last confrontation with Sloan, who offers Bashir a thank you, and an explanation.

Luther Sloan: The Federation needs men like you, doctor. Men of conscience, men of principle… men who can sleep at night. You’re also the reason Section 31 exists. Somebody needs to protect men like you from a universe which doesn’t share your sense of right and wrong.

Dr. Julian Bashir: Should I feel sorry for you? Should I be weeping for the burden you’re forced to carry in order to protect the rest of us?

Luther Sloan: It was an honour to know you. Good night.

This speech serves as a bookend, paralleling Bashir’s conversation with Garak – an old friend who is also a spy – at the beginning of the episode.

Elim Garak: I must tell you I’m disappointed at hearing you mouth the usual platitudes of peace and friendship regarding an implacable foe like the Romulans. But I live in hope that you may one day see the universe for what it truly is, rather than what you’d wish it to be.

Dr. Julian Bashir: Well, I shall endeavor to become more cynical with each passing day, look gift horses squarely in the mouth, and find clouds in every silver lining.

Elim Garak: If only you meant it.

Ends versus means. Do the ends justify? Or do the means dictate the ends? The episode presents Sloan’s case, and leaves judgment up to the viewer.

Further Parallels to Kholberg’s Theory

What distinguishes each stage or layer from the one which comes before it is that one of the intrinsic values has been decoupled. With Kholberg, the advancement to Stage 2 decouples the absoluteness of moral rules; moral rules are now only absolute to the person enforcing them. Stage 3 decouples goodness/badness from the enforcer, and puts it in the aegis of the reasoner. Stage 4 decouples it from the reasoner, and moves it into an abstract legal code. Stage 5 decouples it from the law into the ‘social consensus’, and Stage 6 decouples humanity itself and places it with Universal Ethical Principle – with God.

With the Theory of Power, Layer 2 decouples it from explicit legality to domain-specific ethical systems. Layer 3 decouples ethical system from overarching goals; the ultimate goal is survival, as an extinct animal has no behaviour, moral or otherwise. Layer 4 decouples methodology from goals; any means to achieve the end. Layer 5 decouples ends from control. The individual’s will to power is paramount, all that matters is that they control, even if what they control has been destroyed. And finally, Layer 6 power is decoupled from will; the worship of power for the sake of power becomes everything, and direct control is abandoned – whether by corrupting oneself by joining the network, or destroying that which one holds dear for the sake of unlimited power. One becomes a lever without a fulcrum.

By this point the reader might have noted that nothing elaborated during Layers 2 through 4 is what would normally be described as a ‘Conspiracy Theory’. Layer 2 ran the gamut from official corruption, to Pyramid Schemes and other abusive business practices. Layer 3 focussed on the calamities of total war and unrestrained markets. Layer 4 on various underhanded tactics which can be used to achieve one’s ends. In Kholberg’s Theory of Moral Development, he likewise began with a definite – but childish – depiction of right and wrong, only to wander off into the realm of subjective morality for Stages 2 through 4. Only at Stage 5 does he return to an understanding of the Universal Ethical Principle, and so too do we, at Layer 5, rediscover a form of Conspiracy which deserves the title.

This is why Conspiracy Theories are often so easy to dismiss: just as atheists will attack childish notions of God which were merely intended to introduce the concept to children, so too do debunkers attack the simplistic understanding of conspiracy, while ignoring the higher conceptions. Only 10-15% of men cogitate at the Post-Conventional level, and to perceive the extent to which conspiracies can manifest requires both that Post-Conventional level of cognition, and sufficient worldliness to see the political landscape for what it is.

A final idiosyncrasy worth noting in both theories: the invisibility of the 6^th form. Kholberg identified which stage a person was at by asking them a hypothetical, “Should a poor man steal medicine to save his wife?” The first five stages would provide a distinct form of reasoning behind their answer, allowing easy identification. But of the sixth stage, no distinction could be made. Possibly because the only difference between the 5^th and 6^th is internal orientation; both will perform the same actions, for the same logical reasons, but where the former seeks to maximize the social good the latter is seeking to redeem souls – which are not a physically quantifiable object.

In other words, one cannot distinguish a Saint from a Bodhisattva.

No more can a Layer 5 Mastermind be distinguished from Layer 6 Keyser Söze. Both will have a criminal empire; both will ostensibly be labouring towards some cause; but the latter manipulates for the sake of manipulation, not for any objective end, not even his own ability to control. He has disappeared beyond the moral event horizon, a point beyond which nothing can be known.

The Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power describes the end result of believing that the ends justify the means; in pursuing such a philosophy, one eventually winds up at a singularity where both ends and means become the pursuit of power for the sake of power. Layer 1 sacrifices the good of another for the good of the self. Layer 2 sacrifices the spirit of the law for the letter of the law. Layer 3 sacrifices heroism for victory. Layer 4, integrity for manipulation. Layer 5 seeks to destroy the world in order to save it, and at layer 6 all that remains is the abyss.

The Social Effects

The virtue of moral understanding which Kholberg describes has implications en aggregate; the higher the ‘moral IQ’ of the population, the better the society, but the effect is gradual. The effect of moral corruption’s, however, is far more dramatic. The fruits of the tree of power may be rotten, but they’re also very potent. A small cabal of conspirators can wind up having a major effect on the body politic, through the direct effects of their actions as well as the indirect fallout, the negative externalities which they engender. By understanding conspiracies as employing a particular moral-cognitive apprehension of power, we can anticipate what sort of forms they’ll take and what the eventual effects upon society might be.

Layer 1: Truth and Villainy

Conspiracies which occur at this layer tend to be prosaic. They break the moral code outright, in the pursuit of some quantifiable good. This can include anything from a group of “mean girls” in high school who are spreading false rumours to bolster their own social status, to a formal organization of thieves; popularity and wealth are good ends, it is the immoral means which is the problem. Even when the ends are contemptible – mean girls who try and cause a suicide, or networks of sexual predators – these groups are nonetheless pursuing something which they consider good for themselves. For the purposes of the present study we’re not interested in condemning the evil end – we’re not discussing lone sadists or predators – what we are concerned with is the harm caused by the conspiracy itself.

The effects of Layer 1 conspiracies are to decrease social trust. They cast suspicion onto everyone, undermine the value of the currency, and cause us to question whether a contract can be trusted. The presence of mean girls forces us to ask if our child’s friend group is doing something stupid because they’re teenagers, or if our daughter is being gaslit. The professional thieves force us to spend additional money on security. The networked sexual predators create a risk category which the lone wolf cannot achieve on his own.

Layer 1 is the Tragedy of the Commons made manifest

Layer 2: Professional Ethics

In his 1992 comedy special Relentless, Bill Hicks gave a lengthy rant on advertisers, how they would do anything they could get away with, and then sleep like babies.

“What didya do today, honey?”

“Oh, we made ah, we made arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.”

In 2016, the FDA published new guidelines allowing for ten times the concentration of arsenic in baby food as in any other product intended for human consumption, presumably due to the influence of Gerber lobbysists.

The conspiracies which Layer 2 thinkers devise exploit systemic complexity while hiding behind legality. They’re of such a sort that your average person would call it corruption, while falling short of the explicit definitions proffered by various anti-corruption NGOs. There is no explicit “abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” instead they involve a gaming of the system, remaining technically true to the letter of the law while abusing its spirit.

Sometimes the goal will be profit: corporate lobbyists and the manipulation of industry watch dogs, for instance. Other times it will be ideological: such as how the Duluth model of domestic violence was pushed into policy by misandric Feminists. In still others it can have a subversive political motive: in 1981 the Southern Poverty Law Centre began issuing a free annual report titled Hatewatch, gradually supplanting the criminology departments of many law enforcement agencies with their own biased perspective.

Layer 2 conspiracies rot the legal infrastructure of a society. Regulatory capture offers some obvious short-term benefits, but eventually the public will grow wise to the fact that the “Triple-A Stamp of Approval” is meaningless. Over the long-term it can lead to complete alienation and a contempt for legal authorities. By exploiting the legal system, Layer 2 conspirators cause the legal system to become meaningless.

Layers 3: the State of Nature

The conspiracies which occur at layers 3 are ultimately a conspiracy against the self. Operations at this layer exist outside of any explicit legal code, and thus there is no legal authority who can adjudicate the licitness of the actions. It is summed up by the slogan “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” which embodies the Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch.

In war, all that matters is victory. Or so the fool believes.

Since our earliest days, we’ve been trying to understand what consequence to our actions. While it rains on the just and the unjust alike, there nonetheless seem to be certain currents which flow through meta-reality, judging the overall pattern of our choices. It can be labelled karma, or the higher laws of strategy, or the Tao, or the Natural Law, but whatever it’s called there seems to be something in the universe which eventually rewards evil with evil.

Nietzsche warned his Übermensch of this force: “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” While a war can be won through unjust means, a nation which does so will eventually suffer a fall from grace.

The conspiracy here is against our higher selves, and threatens to undermine that which we fought for.

Layer 4: Applied Corruption

This brings the evils of Total War down to the individual level, deploying any and all tools against any and all individuals. This leads to deploying evil means against good people, and acts of war against allies, permanently degrading humanity as a whole to achieve a temporary victory.

A spy who resorts to Epstein-style plots both their targets; they create an enemy who is both stupid and vicious, who over the long-term will be far deadlier than an enemy who is strong and wise. They also degrade themselves by resorting to such tactics, and will inevitably turn these tactics upon their allies, and even their own citizens, with the same results.

By pretending to be evil they become evil, and they wind up devoting extensive resources to reporting on ‘radicalization’ when all of the radicals are agents provocateur within their own employ – except for the few which they themselves radicalized.

When Intelligence agencies pollute the discourse with manipulated narratives, it eventually becomes impossible to assess what the public actually believes. They alienate the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, which destroys the feedback organs, rendering informed decision making impossible. Lost in a sea of lies and ugliness of their own making, they become hoist on their own corrupt petard.

Layer 5: the Mastermind

The difference between a Mastermind and a Visionary is that the latter has the ability to inspire. He accrues followers committed to his cause. NDAs and oaths of loyalty will play a role in structuring his organization, but it’s the compelling vision which grants him the loyalty of his subordinates, he uses the carrot, not the stick. The Matermind’s vision is one of darkness: fear, control, and cruelty. He controls by compromising all who follow him.

This what James Burnham described in his book The Managerial Rebolution. Petty bureaucracies, that seek replace messy humanity with bug-like order. It’s the methodology of Climate Change advocates, who seek to impoverish the world into economic stability instead of forging ahead courageously with fission and fusion, and of those who fear nuclear war, who they seek to emasculate the human race and prevent all aggression. It is a methodology which degrades their own followers, until it finally reaches the point of Bio-Leninism: a conspiracy which can only recruit from the dregs of society. It fills itself with the mutants and freaks by promising them high social status after the revolution, because each of them knows deep down that in anything resembling a just society, they’d find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order, in prison or worse.

The Mastermind inevitably ends up leading an army of petty, callow, Untermenschen, degrading even those into worse forms through the petty cruelties he inflicts. It is a conspiracy which lives by parasiting already established institutions, wearing them as a skin suit, until they’re ultimately destroyed. But in the process, he ejects the men of quality, punishing them for their integrity and talent. A man with a sense of agency and self-reliance cannot be manipulated by him.

So although his vision will ultimately fail, he manages to wreak great havoc to all of those under him. An HR director with this approach can destroy a company’s workforce; replacing the talented sales people with compliant sales people, et cetera. These individuals are, killing the institutions they occupy, while driving the best and brightest into the hinterlands, where they’ll form the barbarian hordes that eventually come back to destroy the empire.

Layer 6: Keyser Söze

There is a type of person out there who loves to conspire just for the sake of conspiring. Gas-lighters, Cluster Bs, those who dedicate themselves to Satan (whether as a philosophical principle, or as a metaphysical entity) – they delight in manipulation and destruction for its own sake.

What differs this layer from the previous is that the Mastermind excels in exploiting people’s vices; Layer 6 takes advantages of their virtues as well.

Layer 5 conspiracies will utilize virtues – a great engineer who is otherwise compromised, for example – but these virtues are nonetheless a threat to the Mastermind’s control, that engineering genius could potentially be used against him. The Keyser Söze has no such plan. Your courage can be used against you, tricking you into defending an enemy or fighting one of his. Your sense of decency, to underestimate his duplicity. This is what stood out about the DS9 episode Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges; it was Bashir’s own integrity and insight which turned him into a useful tool. With no explicit end in sight, just an endless game of manipulation, Keyser Söze throws everything into chaos and makes his enemies second guess themselves.

Should he manage to network with others of his type – and should that network discover another network – they’d immediately fall in to a cooperative/competitive network with one another.

People who have descended past the abyss no longer need a formal conspiracy to conspire; they’ll naturally discover one another, and will work to undermine anything which is good, true, and beautiful. They become the equivalent of demonic tempters; constantly interrupting and upending any natural harmony which manifests in society. They manifest the fallen nature of our world.

Real World Examples

To finish cementing the conception of the different layers, let us consider some real world examples to avoid the pitfalls of fiction. While questions such as the Trolley Problem are useful for discussing the ethics of triage, they are also prone to abuse; creating artificial scenarios designed to achieve a particular conclusion. More complex fictional stories can likewise be used to obscure the truth, either to minimize the presence of conspiracies by suggesting that they’re impossible, or by wallowing in the impossible for the sake of dramatic tension.

Some of the conspiracies listed below are only suspected; the evidence supporting them is tenuous and controversial, and have further been obscured by false claims – either by the credulous, or by agents seeking to conceal. Others are proven, but unacknowledged. However our purpose isn’t to determine the veracity of any particular conspiracy, but only to examine how the moral-cognitive model creates a framework in which they operate. Providing the evidence is beyond the scope of this piece, and skepticism should be applied to any of these claims.

Layer 1

Criminal organizations dedicated to vice are the most common from here, although political and financial corruption can also exist. It is not uncommon for such lawless groups to become useful to lower-order conspiracies, however. There have been multiple instances of child sex-trafficking discovered (the Dutroux Affair, The Findere, Haiti) which appear to have started off as such, but grew into something far more elaborate over the years. At the base level they are staffed with your stereotypical thugs, however.

Layer 2

One of the dangers of vice squads is the ever-present temptation to start breaking the law to enforce the law. Fast and Furious has already been mentioned, but there are many other cases of organizations such as the FBI radicalizing targets, such as in the case of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, or utilizing the CIA to help train and finance groups such as Al Qaeda.

Layer 3

Many times throughout history, international bankers have worked to subvert nations. The formation of the Federal Reserve on Jekyll Island is the latest example, but prior to that the Rothschilds manipulated the Napoleonic wars to gain financial control of Britain, and before that there was the Bavarian Illuminati. By this point politics and money have merged, and in many cases law enforcement will find themselves subservient to these organizations.

Gross violation of International Law would also belong in this group, such as Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, as well as allegations that they’ve had allied political leaders assassinated.

Layer 4

Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express, used to blackmail and control politicians. Wiretapping one’s own citizens, and interfering with the free press such as Operation Mockingbird, and using Cointelpro assets to manipulate the political discourse on social media to push ideological concepts. All of these pollute humanity’s ability to morally reason, and the government’s ability to understand the will of the citizenry.

Layer 5

Klaus Schwab’s plans for a “Great Reset” – which he elucidated in his book – is a master plan to enslave all humanity so that we’ll never have to make a moral choice for ourselves again. “You’ll own nothing and be happy,” as they like to tell us. The novel Brave New World provides a justification for this banal servitude. Pizzagate is another suspected Layer 5 conspiracy, as repeated appearance of witches and Satanic rituals amongst the central figures suggests that the core purpose is achieving Luciferian ‘enlightenment’, not merely the hedonistic abuse of children.

Layer 6

Here is where we find Cabal, the alleged Ur-conspiracy. Purposeless gangstalking, the hording of new technology, and networks reaching down into the early years of the school system. Wild claims are connected to this layer; many are certainly false, but others could be explained by its spontaneous nature. For instance, the children of parents who are themselves corrupted agents, manifesting their own independent groups in high school to psychologically torture their peers; and then going on to integrate those groups into the formal (and informal) intelligence community.

Fighting Back and Avoiding the Snares

The best way of fighting back is to avoid creating a fertile ground for conspiracies in the first place. Just laws, equitable labour practices, and fair dealings remove much of the incentive to sacrifice all else for power. The second method is exposure. Daylight is the best disinfectant. But investigations are expensive, too much daylight burns, and paranoia has a way of backfiring against the self. Not to mention that you can’t investigate a conspiracy which you don’t already suspect.

So in addition to reasonable caution and fact-finding inquisitions, a series of best practices can be adopted to address conspiracies various forms.

Schema 1: the Liar

These power games are prosaic, and the best defense is Rudyard Kipling’s Gods [Wisdom] of the Copybook Headings. “All that glitters is not gold,” and “Caveat Emptor” are the most obvious, but of particular relevance is “You can’t scam an honest man.”

Classic confidence games such as the Pigeon Drop rely on the mark’s complicity in order for the scammers to pull it off. The con man pulls the mark in, invites him to share in the ill-gotten spoils, and then when he’s left penniless, he’s in no position to go to the police.

Avoiding shady dealings kills the market for the sorts of conspiracies. Schema 1 seeks to exploit your foolishness, and can be avoided by simple wisdom.

Schema 2: Demoniac

In a world without rules, the guiding principle becomes balance.

This is the core concept of virtue ethics. Historically encapsulated in the four cardinal virtues, each lies at mean between two extremes. Courage is the balance point between caution and daring, Justice the balance between punishment and mercy, Temperance between indulgence and aestheticism, and Prudence between experiment and tradition.

In the world of adults there are no absolute rules which can be counted upon, only patterns which engender consequences. The complete effects of our actions cannot be known. To pretend otherwise is hubris; to claim omniscience is damning pride. This is why blind, ends-justify-means, power-seeking drives us towards Hell. The myriad of consequences from your actions which can’t ben foreseen will echo with the moral flavour of your choice.

To pretend that there are hard and fast rules to obey – as if religion were some sort of prosaic legal code – turns you into a photo-negative of a Pharisee, embracing noble defeat, and handing the victory to evil.

Schema 2 conspiracies exploit your moral shortcomings. Either to rashness or to excess caution, tempting you to imbalance and capture. Only by maintaining a stable footing – Clausewitz’s ‘moral aspect’ of warfare – does one avoid turning victory into defeat.

Schema 3: the Demoniac

Schema 3 is fundamentally unbeatable. They hold all the cards, and you can always go one layer deeper before hitting rock bottom. There is a widespread belief that the Abyss has 666 layers, but in truth the descent never ends. The only winning move is not to play, and yet it is a game we must play. So we are to be in it, let us be in it, but not of it.

The mastermind creates a rigged game. If you become a threat to him, you will be destroyed. You will be punished for your virtues, and only in obscurity will you be allowed to flourish. His methods are seldom direct. Was your bad luck manifest, or the machinations of a devilish mind? Too much pondering of this question is the path to paranoia. The Keyser Söze is even worse. He turns your virtues into vices. Your spirited rebellion against the New World Order becomes his Hegelian antithesis to drive the new synthesis. By trying to win against such a man you play into his hands.

The only way to deal with such madness is to fight fervently and to accept the outcomes with equanimity.

The three spiritual virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity are how we stride across the Abyss. Faith that Good is true, even though we inhabit a universe governed by evolution and power. Hope that the dark side of the Force might be “Quicker, easier, more seductive,” but it isn’t more powerful. And Charity to forgive our enemies – because if we don’t we become that which we fought.

Powers and Principalities

At the core of conspiracies and power-seeking is the belief that the ends justify the means. Once higher principles have been abandoned, conspiratorial behaviour – formal or informal, criminal or casual – becomes inevitable.

It is also inevitable that some men will abandon higher principles.

Ergo, it is inevitable that conspiracies will periodically crop up, and by their very nature they will be invisible to most people, at most times. Even in defeat many of them remain anonymous.

And yet they have been defeated.

At the execution of King Louis XVI, it is claimed that a man jumped out of the crowd, and plunged his hand into the blood, and shouted “Jacques de Molay, tu es vengé!” – in reference to the 1314 execution of the last Grandmaster of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake for his crimes against humanity.

Powers and Principalities are part of the eternal struggle, but conspiracies come and go. Their inherent corruption is self-defeating, and in the end they are always fail. It is the responsibility of those who understand them to hasten their demise, so that we might hold this world in trust for generations to come.